Jamón, Jamón **** (1992, Penélope Cruz, Stefania Sandrelli, Anna Galiena, Javier Bardem) – Classic Movie Review 6194

Co-writer/ director Bigas Luna’s saucy, sexy and provocative 1992 comedy is an intense, bawdy Latin sex farce awash with stereotypically Spanish macho hunks and nymphets in tight dresses, who spend their lives in dirt-covered rural Spain.

This is the arena where the link between sex and food is steamily explored by promising director Luna, working in a field opened by fellow countryman Pedro Almodóvar. The clever mix of melodrama and out-and-out comedy is often sexist, mostly compelling and usually audaciously funny, though the climatic ham fight is a test of the director’s nerve and audiences’ sensibilities. Jamón (pronounced xaˈmon) is of course the Spanish word for ham.

The young Penélope Cruz is an exciting force of nature as Silvia, the sexy underwear factory machinist daughter of the town hooker (Anna Galiena), who beguiles a wealthy mother’s boy, named José Luis (Armando del Río), an executive at his parents’ underwear factory. But then Sylvia gets pregnant and José Luis plans to marry her – against the will of his parents.

And Stefania Sandrelli is admirable too as José Luis’s unimpressed mother, the owner of the factory, who hires a hunky tyro torero (bullfighter) and underwear model called Raul (the suitably sweaty Javier Bardem) to be a magnet for Cruz’s low-class Silvia and seduce her away from her son.

Also in the cast are Juan Diego as the father, Jordi Mollà and Tomás Martín.

It is written by Bigas Luna, Cuca Canals, Quim Monzo, shot by J L Alaine, produced by Andres Vicente Gomez and scored by Nicola Piovanni.

It was advertised as the Winner of the Silver Lion Award Venice Film Festival, but it tied with Hotel de lux (1992) and Un Coeur en Hiver (1992), and that also means it missed out on the Golden Lion Award.

Luna and Bardem reunited for Golden Balls in 1993.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6194

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Jamón Ibérico.